


a time to every purpose

by spacenarwhal



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Babysitting, Domestic Fluff, Established Relationship, Future Fic, Halloween, Kid Fic, M/M, Minor Injuries, Trick or Treating
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-09
Updated: 2018-10-09
Packaged: 2019-07-28 11:55:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,234
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16241114
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spacenarwhal/pseuds/spacenarwhal
Summary: The hallways are clogged with witches, ghouls, goblins, spider-men, and a hulk. Foggy and Matt follow Lucy from door to door, Foggy making sure to mention the costumes that catch his eye. (He thinks he catches sight of a mini-Daredevil at one point but it turns out to be some kind of transforming robot knight Lucy recognizes from a kid’s show. It’s the biggest let down of Foggy’s night.)Most of their neighbors on the top floors of the building recognize them when they open the door, leaning down to shake Lucy’s hand when she offers it in introduction. “Babysitting duty.” Foggy explains, usually after a surprised, prying look shot between him and Matt.“Test drive?” Ms. Nasr asks knowingly, dropping a pack of fruit snacks into Lucy’s pillowcase. Matt blushes red, injured arm held stiffly at his side, free hand brushing Foggy’s wrist behind Lucy’s back. “Uh.” He says eloquently, and Foggy hurriedly reminds Lucy to say thank you and ushers them all to the next door.[Or: Matt's benched with an injury, Foggy's on babysitting duty, and Lucy Rand is a butterfly. A Halloween night with Nelson and Murdock.]





	a time to every purpose

**Author's Note:**

> Me: [*sees Daredevil s3 promotional poster*](https://idobi.com/news/get-your-first-look-at-marvels-daredevil-season-3-with-this-teaser-poster-art/)
> 
> Me:...
> 
> Me: Well, that's not great advice, Matt.

“Don’t fear the dark. Become it.” Matt says and it takes literally everything in Foggy’s body to stop him from groaning. He steps away for two minutes and this is what he comes back to.

Lucy, bless her soul, isn't buying what Matt's selling. “Wha's tha' mean?”

“Lucy Rand, don’t speak with your mouth full.” Misty orders from the other side of the room where her and Colleen are still pouring over blueprints.

“Ignore him, hon, the pain meds make him loopy.”

Matt scowls, though that doesn’t negate the fact that his left arm is in a legit cast and there are five whole stitches holding his forehead together. Lucy asked if he was being Frankenstein for Halloween.

“You guys gonna be okay with her tonight?” Misty asks for the hundredth time tonight, and sure, Foggy doesn’t often moonlight as a babysitter these days but there are a gaggle of Nelson cousins in Jersey with all ten fingers and toes accounted for.

“We’re gonna be great.” Foggy answers, hoping distracting Misty from the monster pout Matt’s not bothering to hide. Guy hates sitting out a fight. “Gonna take her trick or treating in the building. Check all her candy. Put her to bed. Right, hon?” He looks at Lucy for confirmation. Lucy gives him a thumb up, slurping another noodle out of her chicken soup.

Misty half-grins, bionic hand propped against her hip. “Alright. Danny will swing by to pick her up tomorrow morning. No candy after eight or you’ll never get her to sleep. No matter what she says.” Misty shoots her daughter a stern look and Lucy giggles, spoon clinking against the sides of her bowl. “Try not to break anything else, Daredevil.” Misty says, picking up her bag. Colleen shoulders a rolled-up bundle of cloth that Foggy knows for a fact is not a yoga mat.

Matt glowers.

Foggy walks Misty and Colleen to the door where Misty pauses. “She might need you to leave a light on for her when she goes to bed. I don’t know what she’s been watching with her father, but it’s got her a little scared.”

“No problem.” Foggy answers, Lucy’s previous conversation with Matt suddenly making a lot more sense. "We've got a nightlight."

“You’re a godsend, Nelson.” Misty says, sharing a full smile and Foggy shakes his head, heat creeping up his ears. “Stop flirting with me and go stop some bad guys already.”

He can still hear Misty laughing after he closes the door.

-

Lucy isn’t hard to entertain, thank god. After cleaning up her dinner dishes, Foggy lets her help him make popcorn on the stove top. Then the three of them sit on the couch with Foggy’s laptop perched on the coffee table to watch _Hocus Pocus_.

“Have you ever fought a witch, Uncle Matt?” Lucy asks, shoving popcorn into her mouth in giant fistfuls in an uncanny impersonation of her father.

Matt munches on his own popcorn, scrunching up his nose. His dark mood only lasted until Lucy announced she was done with dinner and since then he’s been behaving himself just fine. Foggy suspects Matt likes being Uncle Matt, good with kids in a way that makes Foggy’s metaphorical clock start ticking loudly in his head.

Matt’s brow smooths out, “Uh. Not that I know.” There’s been plenty of weird ones throughout the years but between Lucy’s parents alone there’s a robotic arm and glowing ninja hands, which sets the bar pretty high on weird.

Lucy looks disappointed so Foggy adds, “There was a guy with a crazy suit with really long legs. Like Inspector Gadget. He was interesting.”

“Did he have magic powers?” Lucy asks hopefully.

“He had stilts.” Matt answers, catching the piece of popcorn Foggy tosses at him directly in his mouth.

Lucy forgets about witches for a while after that.

-

“Who are you going as?” Matt asks, exchanging his regular glasses for a pair with large bushy eyebrows and a fake mustache attached. Foggy doesn’t know where he found them and can’t decide if it’s a step up or a step down from last year’s costume which had been nothing more than a name tag stuck to Matt’s chest reading _Daredevil_. (“How am I supposed to know what he looks like?” Matt innocently demurred at Josie’s.)

“A butterfly.” Lucy answers, turning so that Matt can touch one of the nylon wings on her back.

“An adorable, sparkly butterfly.” Foggy specifies, capping the small jar of glitter that was included in Lucy’s costume bag. There’re gold specks all over the floor, Foggy’s hands, and Lucy’s hair and face now.

 “And you?” Matt asks, turning those enormous fake eyebrows at Foggy.

“I’m a mouse.” Foggy says, holding out the pair of furry mouse ears he borrowed from Marce. “Duh.” 

-

The hallways are clogged with witches, ghouls, goblins, spider-men, and a hulk. Foggy and Matt follow Lucy from door to door, Foggy making sure to mention the costumes that catch his eye. (He thinks he catches sight of a mini-Daredevil at one point but it turns out to be some kind of transforming robot knight Lucy recognizes from a kid’s show. It’s the biggest let down of Foggy’s night.)

Most of their neighbors on the top floors of the building recognize them when they open the door, leaning down to shake Lucy’s hand when she offers it in introduction. “Babysitting duty.” Foggy explains, usually after a surprised, prying look shot between him and Matt.

“Test drive?” Ms. Nasr asks knowingly, dropping a pack of fruit snacks into Lucy’s pillowcase. Matt blushes red, injured arm held stiffly at his side, free hand brushing Foggy’s wrist behind Lucy’s back. “Uh.” He says eloquently, and Foggy hurriedly reminds Lucy to say thank you and ushers them all to the next door.

-

“Alright, let’s inspect this haul.” Foggy says and Lucy tips the pillowcase over, emptying its contents out on to the coffee table. “Respectable.” Foggy nods approvingly, eyeing the brightly colored fun-sized candy bars.

Lucy insists they sort the candy into piles. There’s one for chocolate and another for hard candies and another for sour stuff and another for gummies. Then there's the lone box of raisins because some people still think that’s an acceptable treat for Halloween.

Foggy tosses anything with a torn wrapper and Matt checks the rest. It doesn't take long and then their inspection devolves into nothing more than Matt showing off for Lucy by guessing what she’s holding from a single sniff. He gets nine out of ten and argues the miss doesn’t count due to injury. “I’m recovering from a concussion.” Matt objects, accepting the peanut butter cup Lucy gives him in consolation.

Lucy changes into her pajamas reluctantly and there are still flecks of gold caught in her hair when she emerges from the bathroom in her favorite green pajamas. She helps them get everything put away, back into the pillowcase, and then Foggy gets the couch set up for her.

Lucy doesn’t often spend the night with them but it has happened before, usually when the gang goes out to do something reckless and necessary to keep the city safe, so now she has a blanket all her own, soft and warm and never having once had a bloodstain on it.

Matt gets her a cup of water and sets it on the coffee table within easy reach.

“Ready for the nightlight?” Matt asks, and Lucy, burrowed under her blanket, nods enthusiastically. “Ready.”

Matt flips the lights off but the room doesn’t go dark. The billboard outside floods the room with golden light. The light turns orange, then yellow, then bronze. Like a butterfly’s wings, Foggy thinks, watching Matt drop a kiss to Lucy’s head before he makes his way towards Foggy.

-

In the bedroom Foggy rolls down the black out curtains he bought pretty much immediately after he started spending the night at Matt’s.

He helps Matt maneuver his cast arm out of his t-shirt sleeve and then they finish getting ready for bed. It’s early still, an adequate bedtime for a seven-year-old but not so much for two grown men pushing forty.

Or maybe it is, Foggy corrects himself, yawning so hard he thinks his jaw is in danger of dislocating. He thinks back to Halloween’s of years gone by, frat parties ripe with cheap beer, bar crawls featuring risqué costumes, nights spent at Josie’s, shooting pool and talking shit while uninitiated twenty-somethings came in asking if there were any specialty cocktails on the menu. He thinks of less pleasant nights in the last few years, lying in bed watching the clock switch from one hour to the next, October rolling over into November within the blink of an eye and Matt no where to be seen. Some of those night ended with nothing more than Matt stumbling in, chilled and tired, grumbling about drunks, and others he’d come in bleeding and almost incoherent, needing Foggy’s help to peel the suit off his bruised limbs.

Tonight, Matt’s next to him in bed, fiddling with his phone, earbud lodged in one ear already as he scrolls down a list of audio files. “What’cha reading?” Foggy asks, undecided between pulling out his kindle or getting out of bed to fetch his laptop off the dresser.

“I don’t know yet.” Matt answers, swiping somewhat awkwardly at his screen with his right hand.

(For all the injuries Foggy’s been around to witness this is the first time Matt’s broken a bone. The part of Foggy that doesn’t know how to mind its own business wants to ask Matt if he really can feel his bones knitting themselves back together the way he claimed when he woke up stoned out of his mind on painkillers in the hospital. The part of Foggy that still worries about Matt listening to his digestive system at work thinks its better not to know.)

“Need a hand, bud?” Foggy asks, only partially for the pun. Matt grins, shaking his head, his earlier bad mood affectively forgotten now.

“I can’t wait to get this thing off.” Matt says, barely lifting his arm off the mountain of pillows it’s propped on.

“Yeah, it would be nice to sleep without the Great Wall between us.” Foggy agrees, patting a pillow fondly.

Foggy decides to grab his laptop after all, shuffles back to bed as quickly as he can. Matt lies on his back, eyes closed as he listens to whatever he decided on, and Foggy clicks through a couple of different bookmarks, trying to get a head start on holiday shopping.

Matt shifts a little, sheets rustling as he stretches his legs out beneath the blankets. “Do you ever think about it?” He asks, out of the blue, and there’s a split second where Foggy thinks he’s talking about the stand mixer he’s eyeing for Ma. But Matt’s eyes are open again, staring sightlessly up at the ceiling, a worried furrow lining his brow. His mouth is pinched at the corner, an unhappy dip pulling it slightly downward into something that’s still too soft to be a frown.

“Think about what?” Foggy asks carefully, trying not to let the worry sprouting up inside his chest to get the better of him.

“Us. Kids.” It doesn’t sound like a question.

Foggy bites his bottom lip. The question opens up slowly, like a jasmine blossom at the bottom of a cup of tea, leaves Foggy full of warm though hazy feelings.

“I dunno.” Foggy says, and Matt frowns. Foggy sucks in a deep breath and mentally curses Matt, super senses and his own fucking heart. “I mean, yes? Sometimes. Not like, every day or anything. Just. Sometimes. The thought has crossed my mind.”

The first time Matt ever held Lucy Foggy had literally cried and it was only partially because he was overcome by the sheer miracle of life. It was because Matt’s face had gone so soft, wonder and happiness and love, all of it unchecked because Matt wasn’t trying to hide it for once. Not just that, god, because that wasn’t enough, no there was something more, something like want that Foggy recognized all to well on Matt’s face and he knew, just knew, Matt would never ask for this no matter what.

Apparently, Foggy was wrong.

Foggy swallows. “Do you think about it?”

Matt’s mouth tenses. “Yeah. Sometimes. I think—it would be nice to have.” His bulky arm brushes against Foggy’s. “With you.”

Foggy’s heart thuds and thunders, he thinks it’ll vibrate right up his throat and out his mouth. Matt’s family. He has been for nearly as long as Foggy’s known him, and for so long it didn’t need any kind of definition because that’s just what they were. Best friends. Partners. Family.

It’s a title that’s changed over the years, the definition shifting and expanding, stretching to encompass more: more people, more expectations, more compassion, more ways to love and be loved.

Foggy reaches over the wall of pillows and Matt’s injured arm, clasps the hand lying perfectly still on Matt’s stomach. Matt’s fingers tangle in Foggy’s, slot between them warm and strong. “I want that too.” Foggy says simply. He’s careful when he moves closer, mindful of Matt’s arm as he leans down to kiss Matt full on the mouth, hopes Matt is listening to his heart now, the erratic, ecstatic thrum of it in his veins.  

 

**Author's Note:**

> So I'm a giant dork for the fact that Luke and Danny basically named their daughters after one another and [Lucy Rand](http://evie-a.tumblr.com/post/127101346774/danielle-cage-and-lucy-rand-in-secret-wars-secret#notes) is a beautiful angel who makes my heart burst because offspring. (fixed the link!)
> 
> So yeah. I'm just gonna keep churning out fluff until s3 starts and I can't type for what I'm sure will be copious weeping.


End file.
